The Republicans' Rabbi-in-Arms

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062401891.html

The Republicans' Rabbi-in-Arms
Christian Conservatives See a Soul Mate in the Man Who Stands by His Scandal-Ridden Friends

By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 25, 2005; Page C01

Every few weeks or so Rabbi Daniel Lapin finds a reason to fly east from his home in Mercer Island, Wash., near Seattle, and spend a few days here. He might be leading a Bible study on the Hill, having dinner with his "close friend" House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, breakfast with Karl Rove. Last year he came for a private Shabbat dinner with President Bush. "The president recognizes my enthusiasm for his faith," says the rabbi.

Usually on these trips Lapin stays with Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who is an old friend of the Lapin family and one of a small elite who share Lapin's very particular niche in Washington: a practicing Orthodox Jew who is a renegade among the city's Jewish establishment but moves comfortably among conservative Christians.

Abramoff is under investigation for allegedly defrauding his Indian casino-owning clients and for allegedly breaking lobbying laws. In a stack of e-mails released this week by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, several scandal sidekicks made unexpected cameos. Among them were Daniel Lapin and his younger brother David, rabbis from South Africa who are heirs to a 200-year-old rabbinical dynasty and very updated ambitions.

Washington has a long history of pastors to the powerful, fallen and otherwise: Billy Graham, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton's J. Philip Wogaman. With a city increasingly dominated by the religious conservatives who appreciate Lapin, he can now be described as Republican Washington's Official Rabbi, and to some it's an improvement.

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[Lenore]

1. Thank you for posting this...

I have been trying to figure out what to do about my church sponsoring an upcoming "God and Country Rally" with this Rabbi Lapin as one of the keynote speakers. I will be watching this thread with great interest as I gather my facts and decide what to do. Thanks again.

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2. Lapin: Michael "Greed Is Good" Gekho Meets Talmudic Taliban

Here it is in a nutshell: 1) God made the law, so I don't need yours; 2) God made me rich, so I'm not sharing; 3) God made me in His image - you aren't quite like me - so you're not with God; and 4) If you're not with God, bad things are going to made to happen to you.

A few illustrations, below, of Lapin's peculiarly intolerant credo from the article:

Lately he's joined the crusade against what conservatives call "activist judges": "It's like the verse in Jeremiah where God says, I will be your king and I will be your lawgiver and I will be your judge. Therein lies the core. The founders enshrined three branches of government . . . and I find unusual this seizure of power by judges that rightly belongs to the people."

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It may sound "anti-Semitic," he says, but there must be a reason why Jews are disproportionately represented on the Forbes 400 list, and he concludes that the best explanation is that "Jewish success is embedded in the Torah system. We don't believe it to be an evil process."

"Does God want people to be rich?" he asks. "Yes!"

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Lapin was invited by some senators to teach Bible classes on the Hill. He gave sessions to members of Congress explaining the biblical roots of conservative policies. In one session on "Joseph and Taxation," he explained that in ancient societies taxes never rose above 20 percent.

"They were fascinated by that," he recalls, "to learn that this was not an accident, that the tax rate was designed by the great architect in the sky."

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Greed for money and power are the sins of the moment in Washington, and the people under suspicion are many of Lapin's close political friends: Abramoff, DeLay, Reed and, distantly, Norquist. But Lapin dismisses it all as an accounting error.

"You can't just make money and then as an afterthought think of ethics as a cost item, something that cuts back profits," he says after his speech. "The right way is the best way."

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"We are really two separate nations," he writes, one side supporting and the other opposing "Judeo-Christian morality playing a role in American public life." He then took on every issue dear to the Christian right -- atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, pornographer Larry Flynt, the gay rights movement -- and added liberal Jews as a target.

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